So the Los Angeles Times published this article recently, and it makes me really… uncomfortable.

To sum it up for you, a large number of people are still damn retarded when it comes what these days can be considered the basics of technology. To quote, “A recent study found that many Americans are lost when it comes to tech-related terms, with 11% saying that they thought HTML — a language that is used to create websites — was a sexually transmitted disease.” Not only badly informed on the foundations of the web, but also doing poorly on the sex-ed front. Read through the list in the article, it’s absolutely ridiculous. 42% thought a “motherboard” to be part of a cruise ship. Forty-two percent!

Even more flabbergasting is that the larger part of respondents agreed that it was important to be up-to-speed with technology these days. I mean, sure, can’t say that’s not really super important. But you don’t see me then proceeding to say software is comfortable clothing.
Granted, I’m not one to talk since tech is basically my home industry. However, it’s still pretty scary that such a large part of people these days are still not aware of what should be really basic terminology. (Do keep in mind that apparently the survey was conducted over email, and so the technology illiterate have already been excluded.) If you don’t understand the fundamentals, how can we expect you to do your job, which is bound to include computers in some way, properly? (Okay, a bit of a stretch there, but you get my point.)

I’m also kind of sad, because I had hoped these kind of figures would be much lower by now. It’s 2014 and there’s still people flailing about when it comes to technology. Do we just give it more time, or what?
~ Fang